Dirty little secrets of affiliate programs ...
 

Do you know of a dirty little secret that one or more affiliate programs use that results in decreased affiliate income? If so, post it here, no company names needed. I'll start with one that has always bugged me and is done by practically every program.

No email or even news posted at their site regarding discontinued or otherwise inactive sites. Programs will often just quietly remove the link code from the linking page. The affiliate link code may just no longer work or if you are lucky redirect the traffic to another site in their network but unfortunately often the site is not in their network and thus you get no credit. If you got PPC ads running for the site and you do not keep on top of this, you could be buying advertising for the site with the traffic all getting redirected to a site outside their network for their profit.

BTW, if you run a program that does not do the above or any other things reported in this thread please post your program info so I and others can sign up if we have not already.

bump for the dirty secrets :winkwink:

setting cookies to expire after a short time (like 1 hour lol)

hmmm...that's slick :1orglaugh how about popups or email collections?

Wrong idea, you'll get spammed by every program rep out there

In regards to popups, many sites offer popup free link codes but since they know most people only need it for entrance and exit of the landing page, they will launch popups on entrance or exit of the tour or join page so technically it is not really popup free link code.

I think the fact that not one program has replied to my invitation to spam their program with the only limitation being that they do not do what I wrote about speaks volumes. If a program does these things and posts in here anyway, I and I am sure others will call them out on it.

Man.... I Hope There Aint No More Dirty Secrets

www.nscash.com does none of the things you have mentioned so far...in fact, they are some of the more honest people in the biz and have never really had any drama related to them

I don't like it when programs put the min payout at something like $100...then I send a couple joins and figure out that it sucks...so I basically lost money because I had $60 instead of $100...and if I tried an adwords campaign or some shit, I lost even more money

Checked a popular(on this board) site, and tried the email collection box at the bottom. Signup went ok, but when you click the link that takes you back to the site, it gets a new ref code.

Good one, that reminds me of another related one. Basically when a program offers a webmaster referal program and when you click on the affiliate links to one of their normal sites, the "Webmasters" link in the footer of the page does not have your code in it.

www.venuscash.com does not do any of this.
One linking code works for all my sites or the affiliate can have the link go to any page on my site he wants or have a special page made just for his/her traffic. Even if that page was removed, his link code would still work.

I hate it when the webmaster link on the ref link paysites do not include my iwebmaster id.

Scumbag programs are what will kill the affiiliate game.

I have been an affiliate since 2000 and not one major program I list on http://www.affiliatesrus.com I have had for more than 4 years.

At last count I have dumped 40 programs.

Yeah, I have not had any problems with NSCash although since I don't think they have ever discontinued a site since i have been there I don't know firsthand that they send out an email notifying their affiliates of such.

I agree about the high payouts. The highest I have seen is $200. I guess it should not have been too big a surprise that conversions were great up to $100 and then fell like a rock as they continue to earn interest on my $100 a year later.

Programs come and programs go.

I saw a dialer program the other day that had a minimum payout of $300.

LOL.

No "Dirty Secrets" here...

Affiliates get paid every week like clockwork.

http://www.HowIgotRich.com

Going back to your original post. I recently dropped a 'sponsor' that had sites just disappear, and then not respond to emails about it. Maybe it's teh same one, but doubt they are the only one :)

Or those sites that have email collection boxes, and upon completion, they popup a fpa to sites they don't even own. Let alone not even bother to tag that email as the affiliates referral.

How about those 'recurring' sites that have links to their 'store' as one of the first clickable links(or anywhere on the page for that matter), to a whole list of sponsor links with whom you get no credit.

then some of these places have FHGalleries that 'mess up' at certain intervals throughout the day, not all the time, but sporadically. Or even some of these FHG have rotating links to other programs which of course the affiliate gets no credit.

How about sponsors that buy spyware/adware ads and then target their affiliates sites/domains and popup FPA's right over the top of their own affiliate sites.

and on and on

Fabulous Cash and Spunkbucks will NEVER do this sort of shit. We started in the biz as resellers, and, in fact, we still resell.

The unscrupulous tactics of many in this industry have prevented affiliates from being able to beleive something based soley because one says so. So while I do not have any reason to doubt any of the claims from companies that say they do not do any of this stuff, at least to me, their claims would be alot more credible if they took the time to post specific examples where possible or if multiple affiliates voluntarily confirmed such.

For example if you closed a site, name it, when you sent an email about it and when that it actually closed. Or provide an affiliate link to a site to show you encode your Webmaster links if you offer such a program. Or if you provide no pop up links, post a no pop up link code that does not pop up anywhere on the tour. You get the idea.

My guess is very few if none will bother because I think most program owners/reps beleive there are more naive webmasters out there than not and thus there is little reason for the programs to go out of their way to prove their integrity - assuming they have some.

How about the programs that submit galleries (anonymously) promoting their pay sites, and then use GeoIP etc. to redirect to their own TGPs that of course promote their own pay sites but also others. Oh.. and then they signup those same TGPs for traffic trades as well.

i know a dirty little secret. you're a fake nick!

:1orglaugh



btw, duck!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

here come all the ass kiss sig whores and people paid to tell you to promote their program.

:1orglaugh :helpme

sneaky dirty secrets..

Hows this for shitty dirty little thieving sneaks.
too many affiliate programs geoip redirecting foreign traffic & sending it to some other site outside of the progam network. More than you think.

How about join links or enter links on a 2257 page?? the 2257 link is often the only link on a tour or FHG that does not transfer or track the ref id... and alot of times it is the most prominent & most noticable link on the page..

and I am sick of the cookie this & that bullshit. It is 100% complete, utter bullshit. cookies are good for nothing. If the surfer don't buy right now, you're not getting shit. Plain & simple FACT!

I come across one sponsor who pops a console in FRONT of a FHG promoting another site WITHOUT your ID.

I also think it is pretty sneaky & low class for a sponsored site to send exit traffic to another programs paysites.., That in my opinion is as low as one can go. Pretty fucking shady to have webmasters send them traffic so they can send it somewhere else.


and someone mentioned email collection, NEVER promote a paysite that has email collection boxes outside the members area. You know they are emailing the surfer you sent & selling him a membership, and you're not getting shit for it unless it says so in the program details.

I am trying to increase not decrease affiliates incomes so while my nick may be a secret it is not a dirty one. :)

That's ok, I invited people to post if they know a programs does not do any of this stuff. This way if a program or affiliate claims they don't do something and another affiliate of theirs knows otherwise and reports such, it will just expose them and/or the program for who they really are. :1orglaugh

It is amazing what some programs will do to earn a little extra cash. They seem to forget that their sites are what is important and they should want to keep the members not upsell them or send them somewhere else. Yet go into any members area besides a few and see that they are anything but concerned with their website. Also look at programs using crossales that is what pisses me off most especially when partnership. I am talking from a revshare standpoint.

One thing that I love most is programs that have ads to other sites right on tours; their are quite a few that do this. Of course they say it is making them nothing. So why have them there?

Wait for the affiliate programs to come and say they have to do so much and we are lucky we get anything. We are paid to much; they have to do this to offset costs whatever.

It is all a bunch of bull ...

But hey it pays the bills :winkwink:

MayorsMoney does not scam.

I forgot to mention, I found a sneaky fuck who uses ccbill, and has the linking code go to a framed page. It's a 100% frame, so you wouldnt even notice it was in frames unless you check the source code. Surfer clicks join, & guess what. You don't get credit because the click is tracked from the page that is inside the frames WITHOUT your id!!!

NEVER promote anything that uses frames, ever!!

SexyAds has never done any of those things. We never have and we never will. We've started coming out with some new affiliate tools and site changes that should really catch your attention before the Phoenix Forum.

We know your traffic is as difficult to get as our site is difficult to maintain so paying members want to stay for years.

Yeah, I have been noticing links to "stores" alot lately on the main page. Normally it occurs at a site focused on a particular porn star so the program will have links to a store's landing page containing DVDs about that particular porn star which affiliates get no credit for. If it was in the members area that would be one thing but many are prominent links on the affiliate landing page.

....says the guy with the biggest signature this side of the mason-dixon


:winkwink:

Just caught one of those a couple days ago

I really wish there was a way to get store programs and paysite programs to join forces and make a way so that the affiliate and paysite owner could both get partial credit for the sales made from the store link

because I run a porn star site, and people do go to porn stars sites just to see what is offered in their "store", and sometimes it is an on site store, and sometimes off site...but I really do wish there was some way of getting affiliates commission for sales

if someone knows a way, let me know and i will work on it, but no one has been able to help me yet

actually, whoever this "fake nick" is, he is pleasant to talk to and intelligent, and not here to flame really, just trying to get some good convo going. I have enjoyed this thread more than most lately

My fhg's are HARD coded with your affiliate ID so there won't be any BS going on with me. See sig.

check us out

We are Honest all the way

http://www.condomcash.com is 100% console free, always has been and always will be.

Regards,

Lee

and promoted by a thief that doesn't pay for work he hired someone to do

Retard,

Lee

There is a certain processor that some programs use that accept payment over the phone and list a toll free number to call on the join page with no "promotion code" or "department number" that the purchaser can provide to the operator so the affiliate can get credited for the sale.

that kind of sounds like ynot payment, but they call you

I signed up with them right when they started. After a week i startet to check my fhg database for 404's and guess what :) All MM FHG's were 404 for me. I didn't change the links to new ones, i just deleted MM from my database.

about 99.9% of sponsor programs fuck their affiliates over with that! :disgust

Yeah, I found a few who were setting cookies to expire too quickly too - that's a fucking rip off. They should go to jail for that shit. Especially when like 50% of your unique traffic will return the next day. I've been using google analytics on a few sites to analyze how traffic behaves, and you'd be amazed at how much return traffic is still viable for sales...It can be as low as 25% return the next day, but still...

without the dirty little secrets most programs would just simply die! They wouldn't make money at all. The only reason a ton of shitty programs are still around is because they use those little tricks and gimmics, they make money of your traffic and they don't credit you.

Most webmasters think that US traffic is the only GOLD traffic, that is the only traffic that purchases memberships and etc. They are fed this bullshit story that only people in USA have VISAs/Mastercards that are approved by merchants online.

A lot of sponsors out there use DIALERS on their pages. Me and you never see those dialers but belive me people in Europe; Germany, Italy, Britan, Switzerland... (some of the ones with best rates per call or per minute) see those dialers. Yes those MODEMS do dial long distance phone numberS!!!

You never see any credits for dialers and minutes and connections. While a guy from Italy can be connected for 20 minutes, Lets say Italy is $2 EURO per minute. You do the calculations. Do some re-search, get some proxies, meet some people in europe, get'm to check pages :) ...

Not many DIALER programs still around? WHy? Cuz they are the fuckign secret of this business. Most sponsors use them and they know how well they are worth it.

e-mail boxes don't bother me, 2257 pages links don't bother me, cookies don't bother me AS MUCH as the no credit for Dial-up sales bother me!

Agreed on the dialers! Here's another one. If a program has unexpected downtime, sometimes even expected downtime due to scheduled server maintenence, many will often not bother to notify affiliates before, during or after it happens. Every notice a period in the day, or god forbid a few days, when your stats just show nothing - bingo.

I suspect some programs just think that most of their affiliates will not notice it so why bother letting them know about it. Others might be afraid that affiliates would pull their links and not put them back up. Probably their biggest concern is that affiliates will expect or request compensation for downtime and their running on too tight a margins to afford to offer such.

If it is a short outage, it is usually not too big a deal for most affilaites but if you are spending 100s or 1000s a day on PPC ads or elsewhere and you are not periodically monitoring their servers, you can be screwed pretty quick by such a routine occurance.

I know I get way more sales then usual on RAINY days (big Rain over US/Canada), when most people are @ home and on their PCs! I hate it when a sponsor's sites "go down" on rainy days even if they admit it or not. Just the un-credited money they make that day is enough for months.

my pet peeve is websites that put a "WEBMASTERS" link at the bottom of your linking pages but dont pass along your ref code..

It's getting to the point where we have to

1. Download their tours and host them ourselves, cleaning up all the leaks, errors and crap and then link to their join page. Then if we wanted we could put in our own pop-ups with our own link codes.

2. Download all the FHGs, clean them up and then link to our own tours.

That would cut out a lot of the crap they pull.

Gee.. Sort of sounds more and more like the old days. i.e. as they've been doing more and more work for the affiliates, they've been screwing them in the process... :1orglaugh

I discovered quite a few, not only using dialers, but redirecting foreign traffic to another site out of the network. I have been using proxies & I am making a list. Every single sponsor I find redirecting foreign traffic is going to be published on this list, and that list is getting posted on every single webmaster board on the net. I was extremely fucking pissed when I found out that one of the larger, more well known companies was doing this and made it my personal oath to personally hand check every single one of them using reflinks & proxies, and bet your fucking ass that if it is redirected, they're going on the list & the whole industry is going to find out. They have no fucking business doing anything at all with my traffic except selling a fucking membership to the site I sent it to. But, no, they fucking send it off elsewhere and that pisses me fucking off real bad. As far as I'm concerned, GONE are the programs that promote ANYTHING AT ALL that is not their own sites!!! I'm done promoting shit sites designed to upsell to somebody else's shit.